World

Israel slams Polish senate's approval of Holocaust speech bill

2018-02-02 09:21:58

JERUSALEM, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Israel's foreign office said the Jewish state sees with "great seriousness" the Polish senate's approval of a law banning mentions of Polish crimes during the Holocaust.

In a written statement, the foreign office said that "Israel strongly opposes the decision of the Polish Senate."

The statement stressed that Israel "sees in great seriousness any attempt to damage the historical reality."

"No law will change the facts," it said.

Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, Polish senators voted 57 to 23 in favor of the bill. The legislation is now pending the final approval of the president.

The bill proposes to jail or fain a person who blames Poland or the Poles for Nazi crimes against humanity which were committed in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. The bill also prohibits phrases such as "Polish death camps."

About six million Jews were killed by the Nazis in World War II, many of them in the death camp of Auschwitz and other death camps in Poland.

The new legislation has already sparked an uproar in Israel and created a diplomatic dispute between Israel and Poland, two allies.

On Sunday, cabinet ministers in Israel slammed the bill as an attempt to rewrite history, with Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will immediately recall the Israeli ambassador to Poland for consultation.